


Reflection Pools

by abrandneweeveelution, rosequartzstars



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: All the gayness, Draco Has Hanahaki Disease, Hanahaki Disease, Harry Potter has a Sword, Merman!Draco Malfoy - Freeform, Multi, Psychological Horror, Young Tom Riddle, merman draco malfoy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:14:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25120726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abrandneweeveelution/pseuds/abrandneweeveelution, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosequartzstars/pseuds/rosequartzstars
Summary: Harry gets sucked through a portal opened by the Mirror of Erised as he’s leaving the Target. He emerges to find himself in a strange world with mermaids, wizards, voices in his head, and dark secrets about himself that could very well kill him—if the strain on his mind from being in a universe other than his own doesn’t.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Hermione Granger/Pansy Parkinson
Kudos: 9
Collections: A Voice in my Head





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hermione_Stranger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hermione_Stranger/gifts), [MonicaMonica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonicaMonica/gifts), [Aissvarya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aissvarya/gifts), [NEVERTAKENSERIOUSLY](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NEVERTAKENSERIOUSLY/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [Beatrix Bagbottler (Weltenweber)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weltenweber/pseuds/Beatrix%20Bagbottler) in the [A_Voice_in_my_Head](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/A_Voice_in_my_Head) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> The Mirror of Erised is a cursed object that forges a dormant connection to everyone who looks into it. In times of great desperation the link opens, and tries to drag the person to death.
> 
> * * *
> 
> These will be pretty short chapters, so there will be more of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by the amazing rosequartzstars!

As Harry pushes the cart out of the home decor aisle at Target, the mirror in his shopping cart starts to glow a shade of darkest black— so dark it could almost be devoid of any color at all. He steps back, startled, and finds himself hyperventilating. He had only picked up the mirror because, for a second, he'd sworn that he could see his parents standing behind him in the ornate glass's reflection. Now, he was having some serious regrets about it.

"Shit," he curses, edging away, "shit, shit, shit, shit," but by his third step it's too late: a pop cracks across the still air, the mirror disappears, transporting itself to somewhere unknown, the cart appears back where it was retrieved from, and Harry Potter is gone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: mentions of child abuse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by the amazing rosequartzstars!

Harry sat up, blinking, and tried to bring his surroundings into focus. That was all just a dream, wasn't it? He had been asleep, and now he was going to wake up, and be back in his cupboard, immersed in the abusive family situation that he didn't dare tell anyone about for fear of what the Dursleys might do to him.

But no: as he blinked, his eyes cleared, and he slowly came to realize that he was on wet, dewy grass, and that there were three girls —a black-haired one, a brunette, and a redhead— sitting in front of him and talking extremely loudly about him.

"...leave him here?" the black-haired girl said. "You know, let the mermaids deal with him? It's their territory, after all." She lowered her voice. "Which I think is a horrible deal, considering that they can't even walk..."

"No, Pansy, we're not leaving him here," the brunette said, in a tone that suggested to Harry that keeping 'Pansy' in line was a common occurrence for her. "Besides, if he's magical, what then?" she said, looking questioningly at 'Pansy'.

The redhead piped up beside her: "Do they even take Creators at Tessa? Or is it just people of magical heritage?"

"Yeah, they take Creators. And Skippers. Any Users can attend."

Suddenly, as if only just noticing he'd woken, 'Pansy' looked down at the increasingly-confused Harry. Scrambling to be quicker than he had a chance to be, she jabbed a stick into his chest and said threateningly, "I have a wand, and I know how to use it. They do too, so don't try anything funny."

"Calm down, Pansy," the brunette said in the same exasperated voice. "He doesn't have a wand, and he's so skinny, he'd probably topple over the second he stood up to fight you. And look at those bruises! Do you really think he's a threat?" She looked him up and down with a disapproving look. "Anyway, we should probably introduce ourselves. I'm Hermione. Hermione Granger. She" —she jabbed her finger at Pansy— "is Pansy Parkinson. She's my girlfriend, so don't get any ideas, and she's" —another finger jab, this time at the petite redhead sitting next to her— "is Ginny Weasley, but you can just call her Gin, she likes it better."

"I'm Harry. Harry Potter," he said dully, his aunt's regular sermons about 'the-polite-thing-to-do' permanently ingrained in him.

Hermione seemed to pay him no attention. Instead, she gestured to the mansion behind them, and Harry wondered why he hadn't noticed such a thing before. He looked around, trying to see any other details he had missed, and found that he was sitting at the edge of a still, black lake. So that was what Pansy had meant by “mermaids”. "And this is Tessa Academy for the Highly Gifted, or, as insiders call it, Tessa School of Magic."


	3. Chapter 3

“I’m sorry, what?” Harry was too shocked to be polite in any way, shape or form. “But—but magic isn’t real! Magic is for little kids, and fairy tales, and Disney, and—“

” _You have a wand pointed at your fucking chest,_ ” Pansy growled, glaring at him. “Don’t say that magic ‘isn’t real’.”

”Pansy, please, calm down,” Hermione pleaded with her, tugging on her arm to try to get her away from Harry. But Pansy was on the warpath, and she refused to be pacified.

”You are literally sitting on the shores of a lake that’s filled with mermaids,” Pansy went on, “and you are looking at one of the finest institutions of magic America has ever seen.”

”We— we’re in America?” Harry stammered. He could have sworn he lived in Britain.

”And, on top of all that, you just fell from a magic portal in the sky. And if you tried my wand, I bet you could cast a pretty powerful charm.” Pansy was still ranting, so Harry used the chance to look around some more, and when he looked at the lake, he could have sworn he’d seen a silvery-green fish tail flick up above the surface. “Harry. Magic. Is. Real.” He looked back at Pansy. “You. Are. Magic.”

Suddenly he heard a voice in his head. “ _Why can’t that girl go easy on him?”_ He had heard it once before, when he was coming out of subconsciousness. 

Before, it had said, “ _How is he so beautiful?_ ”

”What was that?!” He blurted out. Suddenly he heard a splash behind him in the lake and turned around just in time to spot the end of a silver mermaid tail flick above the surface, and then it was gone. Nothing left but ripples in the water. So. Either the mermaids were real, or he was hallucinating. And judging by the looks on the three girls’ faces when he turned back to face them, it was the former.

”Wow,” Hermione breathed, awestruck, “so it is true. I’ve always wondered if the rumors had any foundation to them.”

”Mermaids!” Ginny squealed, just as surprised as Harry.

Harry smiled inwardly at the girls’ reactions. If mermaids were real, surely he could give magic a chance....

”Hey,” he said, getting the girls’ attentions, “can I borrow one of you guys’ wands? Thanks.” Pansy skeptically dropped hers in the grass in front of him and, leaning over, whispered, “See if you can cast ‘ _Capillmentum_ ’ on me.” 

Harry waved the wand at Pansy and said, “ _Capillmentum!_ ” In the split second between when he cast the spell and when he actually saw light come out of the wand and stream towards Pansy, he heard the voice again. 

“ _Why the fuck am I pining over a **human**?_” 

He facepalmed. Why was he hearing voices? Was he hallucinating? Or was it some sort of magical bond? Anything could be possible in this world, as far as he knew. Absolutely anything.

He turned his attention back to Pansy. It seemed that the charm had grown her hair out, down past her shoulders and stopping at her waist. She giggled as she rotated her head, trying to get a look at the black tresses.

”Yay!” Hermione exclaimed. “Now I can finally practice my hair braiding on you!”

“Nuh-uh!” Pansy shot her a deathly glare. “Nope!” She gathered the hair and pulled it into a frizzy ponytail at the base of her neck.

”Anyway, Harry, if you’re going to get into Tessa in time for the start of term,” Ginny said, “we’d better introduce you to Headmaster Dumbledore and convince him to take you in as a student. You’ll still need your own wand, plus robes, a cauldron, books, maybe even a pet—it would be wonderful if you got an owl, because they’re just so pretty!—and you’ll need to receive your dorm arrangements and your roommate arrangements—there’s so much to do!”

”Well, then,” Harry said, “we’d better get started!”

* * *

Over the next few days, he was kept too busy to visit the lake and the secrets within, although he desperately wanted to explore whatever it was that might have spoken to him.

He was shuttled back and forth from meetings with teachers to shops, shops to his room, his room to the dining hall, the dining hall to tours of campus. If nothing else, it filled up his days, but he still had the underlying feeling that he needed to find the source of that mysterious voice, or else something horrible was bound to happen, either to the thing he had heard or to him. He hoped it wasn’t him, but at the same time, he didn’t want something to happen to the other person. If it even was a person that spoke to him that day on the lake.

He needed to find out what it was, and quickly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We hit one thousand words with this chapter! Hope you like it!  
> Again, beta read by rosequartzstars!


End file.
